William
by Catherine Antrim
Summary: William Van De Kamp's life in Wyoming has been as normal as they come until his high school girlfriend is abducted and William is forced to face the truth.
1. Chapter 1

It was hard to tell which of his parents William Van de Kamp took after more. At fifteen he was already nearly six feet tall and gangly, just like his father. His long nose (also his father's) was freckled and his eyes were blue has the Wyoming sky, the mirror image of his mother's. He didn't know this of course, the parents he knew were both petite and brunette, as was everyone in his family. He had eight aunts and ten uncles and at least eighteen first cousins. At family gatherings he stood out in every photo, a laughing giant with fire colored hair.

Not that it bothered William. His mother insisted her great aunt had been a red head and that William looked just like her father when he was his age. Williams cousins teased him sometimes, but he could out run any of them and beat them at touch football every single time and besides, they didn't really mean anything by it.

In fact it was hard not to like William. The boy was always smiling. He was a quarterback on the football team but defied any stereotypes that came with that. He was a good student, perhaps a bit loud but always bright, and well liked. He dated a cheerleader, Clarissa, but neither of them we bullies. Both were shining examples of Midwestern values and manners. Wholesome milk-drinking all American kids with their whole lives ahead of them.

William didn't remember the needle that once pierced his scalp or the rush of iron in his blood, though he did has a small scar he had discovered at age eight, when there was a lice outbreak at his school and his mother shaved his head in the kitchen with his fathers electric clippers. His mother said he fell when he was a baby, just learning to walk.

William met Clarissa when he was twelve and she was eleven at a dance and they drank punch out of plastic cups in the corner of the middle school gym under maroon and white paper streamers, their schools colors. He had seen her before in class but never spoken to her. She had braces and straight blond hair that she tucked behind her ears when she talked. She asked him to dance and he said he didn't know how and so instead they stood drinking their punch and talking about the class they had together.

The next day she passed him a note written in purple pen asking him to sit with her at lunch. He never sat anywhere else again.

The first time William kissed Clarissa he was fourteen and she was thirteen. They had been best friends for two years and had been boyfriend and girlfriend for five months already. William wanted to kiss her sooner but Clarissa had made him wait until she got her braces off, so instead they held hand in the hallways between classes, or he kissed her cheek before going home for the day. He kissed her fingertips intertwined with his when they sat on the bleachers and watched a football game the next town over (William liked to see all the local football games when he wasn't playing himself)

The first kiss lasted only seconds, her lips were sticky and she was wearing something new, strawberry lipgloss, and her smile was all new too, straight white teeth instead of the familiar metallic grin. He remember thinking after that first kiss that he wanted to kiss her every day forever.

When William was fifteen he got his learners permit and started driving his fathers pick up truck. He would pick up Clarissa and they would go to the movies or get a milkshake at Freddy's or just drive around and talk. She had a ten o'clock curfew so they couldn't go too far but there was a place off the road they liked to go where the stars were especially bright and sometimes they saw shooting stars falling to earth and sometimes they didn't even look at the sky and kissed until nine forty-five and made in back to her house at ten on the dot.

I was also when William was fifteen and Clarissa was fourteen that she was taken. As far as William knew, nothing bad had ever happened to him before, and he didn't spend much time worrying that it ever would. But suddenly it did. The police launched an investigation, but from the beginning it didn't feel hopeful. There was a strange lack of detail or clues. From all accounts she had just vanished.

At first William thought it must be a mistake, that any minute she would appear in the empty desk seat in front of him, smiling and applying that strawberry lipgloss and telling him about what had happened in her last class. The wonderful thing about Clarissa was they could have parted one class period ago and she would be just as happy to see him as if they had been apart for days, laughing at his bad jokes and writing him colorful notes littered with gel pen flowers and also some doodles of footballs and their high school mascot, a lion, just for him so it wouldn't be too girly.

But as the days passed the atmosphere changed. They held a memorial of sorts for her in the auditorium. Other cheerleaders tearfully talked about what a good friend she was, how she was always helping them learn new routines, how much they missed her bright light. They played her favorite song. William didn't cry then, he sat motionless in the front row, feeling his classmates eyes upon him. He waited until he was home and broke down in his mothers arms, for even though he was nearly six feet tall, he was only fifteen.


	2. Chapter 2

Just as Williams life had been the picture of normal, his parents, his real parents, almost 2000 miles away, had become domestic in a way they had never imagined possible considering their past. Sometimes they felt their years in the FBI might never have happened, it might all just have been a very strange dream.

Some mornings Scully woke up early and took a jog and watched the sun come up over the mountains. She'd come home to find Mulder still sleeping and climb into bed beside him still fully dressed. Even after all these years together it was just nice to be close to him.

Other days she would stay in bed late until the sun was fully up and listen to Mulder move about their house fixing coffee and whistling, knowing his movements by heart. On these quiet days she sometimes thought how strange it was to be here, how after everything they'd been through that they now spent their mornings drinking coffee and their nights watching the stars on their porch. That she came home from work to the little house where they lived together, to his kisses. No monsters darkened their doorways, they never even fought anymore. He would rake the leaves in the fall and she planted sunflowers (though he thought this was a waste of seeds) in the garden come summer. The seasons passed quietly here.

On this morning however she woke up alone to a still house, reaching for him beside her and coming up cold. For just a moment she was a person she barely recognized, young and alone and full of strange longings. But her eyes flew open and she saw their familiar room, sunlight pouring in the window.

Wrapping herself in a bathrobe, she wandered into the hall.

Mulder wasn't in the kitchen, the only sound was the quiet hum of the dishwasher and the dripping faucet Mulder kept saying he would fix, even though he had never been particularly skilled at such domestic tasks. Nor was he in the living room, just the shelves of books and the soft glow of this fish tank.

Scully sighed and pushed open the door to the study. The walls were still littered with newspaper articles, but they were yellow and fading, and most of the pencils had fallen from the ceiling. Mulder came here now to write, and often Scully came home to the sound of furious typing. Today his hands were still on the keyboard and he stared at the screen with a peculiar expression on his face, one she couldn't read despite how well she knew him.

"Mulder?"

"A girl was taken Scully," he spun in his chair. "Fourteen years old, in a little town outside Cheyenne."

"What are you saying Mulder?" This reenactment of their old routine almost would have been funny if the look on his face hadn't been so strange.

"I'm not sure, I mean, there are no clues, no history of abductions, the police are stumped but Scully that's not why I'm interested"

"Then what?"

Mulder opened the minimized web browser to show a local news article. "This is the missing girl, here see, Clarissa Lambert" he indicated a pretty blond girl in a cheer uniform, standing in front of the football team.

"Mhmm," said Scully. "And?"

Mulder took her hand, his eyes bright, he pointed to a football player who was familiar and yet a stranger all at once.

"Oh my god," Scully said, gasping.

Mulder nodded. "It's him."


	3. Chapter 3

Scully mostly wished Mulder hadn't shown her the article. It wasn't like William had ever been forgotten. She often thought of him in fact, Mulder was right that he had left a hole in both their lives. They could fill it with work, with books, with gardening, and they had each other but it was always there, a quiet emptiness.

But it had never been like this, he had a face now, a face that wasn't yet a man's but wasn't a baby's either. She couldn't get it out of her head. She couldn't sleep, he was all she dreamt of. Making dinner, it was like he was watching. He played football, she thought how different their lives would be with a teenage boy, how loud and messy their little world might be. A tear slid down her cheek and she had to hold onto the kitchen counter to steady herself.

"Scully?" Mulder had just come in from outside. His hair was wild from the wind and he was wearing an old sweater he must have had the past twenty years. No one wore sweaters like that anymore, with those geometric prints.

She looked up with him, her face wet.

"We can't go," she said softly.

Mulder came to stand beside her, wiping her tears and pushing back her hair in that old familiar way.

"I think we have to," said Mulder, looking into into her eyes, still bright from crying.

"Oh Mulder we don't do this anymore. We don't, we can't."

They had decided this years before, that for things to be peaceful they had to choose it. They had to stop looking. It wasn't up to them to save the world. And, as Mulder had said, they didn't ever manage to save the world anyway.

"I think we have to Scully. It's not just selfish- that girl was taken. What if it's not a coincidence? What if he's in danger. You saw him too, he's our son. Can you really keep going not knowing?"

"I don't know Mulder." She sighed and leaned into his body. "I guess I hoped maybe this was enough. Knowing he was safe was all I needed. Now- do you you really think he could be in danger?"

"I don't know anything for certain Scully but I don't want to risk it." He paused, and when he spoke again his voice was soft and broken "I do know I've missed him every single day."

Again Scully thought how different things would be, two men in the house, twice the dirty sneakers by the door, Mulder teaching him to play baseball like he had taught her. She assumed he would take after Mulder, he had his smile and the same mischievous look in his eyes, but she wondered if he took after her too.

"I have too," she said. "I guess I just didn't realize how much."

They held each other in the kitchen and it was almost enough.


	4. Chapter 4

In addition to his height and semi-obsessive fascination with sports, William had also inherited his fathers inquisitive nature. The search for Clarissa had ended a few months back and nothing had been discovered. The fields and hills near her house had been combed many times over and even, gruesomely, divers had searched the lake with no outcome but to give William nightmares about Clarissa's body suspended in water, so realistic that he thought maybe he had seen it in a movie.

Months went by and he still spent his free time on the family computer searching for anything, reading for hours about other girls who has disappeared in the area (there were many.) He began to know all of their faces and they seemed to follow him wherever he went. He couldn't go out in a crowd anymore without searching for them.

The Internet was full of things that haunted him. He learned that most kidnapping victims are taken by a family member, or someone familiar to them. But he has eaten dinner countless times in her parents white and pink kitchen. Her mom always gave him double helpings of everything since he was growing "like a weed only faster" and her father showed him pictures of himself back in high school, when he too was on the football team, and let him look at him trophies and even took William and Clarissa to a baseball game in Cheyenne once. William couldn't imagine them hurting Clarissa anymore than he could imagine his own parents hurting him.

In fact there was no one in the neighborhood particularly ominous, it was a really nice town. People took care of their lawns and would wave as you walked by. He often left his bike unlocked on the front yard and no one took it.

He read once that most kidnapping victims not found within the first 72 hours were killed. Although he felt his stomach drop when he read this, he also couldn't seem to completely accept it as truth. There was no blood, no struggle, it was like Clarissa was just away. William also had trouble believing that monsters could truly exist, that anyone could want someone like Clarissa dead.

And there was something else. Something William had never noticed about himself before, never having spent much time in introspection. But now he acknowledged that sometimes he just knew things. And some part of him simply knew Clarissa wasn't dead.

William decided, despite the statistics, Clarissa's fate was something else. And he was determined to find out what.

He wasn't doing well in classes. Teachers tried to cut him some slack, he had been through a lot, but there was only so much they could do. He didn't listen in class anymore, he was a million miles away, he didn't sleep anymore either so his eyes had developed a glazed sad look that never went away.

He was asked to take the semester off football, much to his dismay. Football was the only thing he felt like he still had, but he kept showing up late and out of uniform, starting fights with the other players. He still came to every game and sat in the back row of the bleachers, biting his fingernails.

His parents didn't know what to do, they took him to a therapist against his will, her office was full of kids toys from the 1990s, all worn and broken and scattered like corpses across the floor. He was too old to be here, he wasn't a child anymore. He didn't know how to describe this new feeling of emptiness to this strange woman. He was fairly certain he had never lost anyone before, but in some way he also knew this wasn't the first time.

His research continued to turn up nothing, but at this point he couldn't stop.

And then he realized , someone else was looking too.

They showed up nearly four months after Clarissa disappeared, it was almost summer break and the air was filled with pollen and sunlight. William had never seen people like this before, they looked like city people in a way he couldn't explain. In Wyoming everyone wore jeans and flannel shirts, faded sneakers and hiking boots. But these two dressed in dark colors and long coats and had pale serious faces. The man was tall, and moved with purpose, the woman much smaller with hair a shade of red hair as bright as William's own.

He first spotted them in a diner downtown. He was there alone drinking coffee, something that he had started doing recently. He used to share milkshakes there with Clarissa or get a burger with his dad after a games. Now coming and drinking coffee, which he still didn't like, made him feel adult. Made him feel somehow less helpless.

The strange couple were sitting on opposite sides from each other, but leaning their heads close across the table, her pale fingers intertwined with her coffee cup. They had spread papers out and were speaking softly to each other. And they were talking about her. William at first thought he imagined it, so used to searching for Clarissa everywhere, but it was unmistakable.

"Clarissa Lambert was last seen on a Friday,"

"Does that matter Mulder"

William almost dropped his cup. He looked directly at them and the woman must have felt his gaze, she looked up too, from across the restaurant, their strangely similar eyes met.


	5. Chapter 5

Clarissa has always been small for her age, and skinny. She often felt she looked younger than her peers, a head shorter, flat chested with braces. Because of her petite size she was always the one on her cheer squad to be thrown in the air or to be on top of the pyramid. Clarissa loved the soaring feeling in her stomach as she flew threw the air.

Although Clarissa was pretty and popular, she knew she had not had a happy life. There was a darkness hanging around the corners of her world that she still didn't fully understand.

She wasn't a sad person, she loved her friends and her boyfriend, William. She laughed often. She was invited to a lot of sleepover parties and would lay in the dark sounded by her girlfriends whispering secrets to each other. But there were some secrets she couldn't tell them. She didn't tell William either, and she wasn't sure she had the words for explain it even if she had wanted to.

In a way she thought maybe knowing that the darkness was there made her appreciate things more. Every moment spent in Mr. Van De Kamp's beat up old truck, looking at the stars with William, his body warm beside hers, felt more special, learning the world could be filled with light too.

Her first true memory of it, she was seven and they lived in a different house than the nice one they had now. Sometimes the old house came back to her in flashes, a sagging tweed couch, peeling wallpaper in the kitchen, her mother crying in the bathroom that was blue on every surface.

She was only seven when they took her, and although she was scared, she knew it wasn't the first time it had happened.

What happened after she was taken wasn't something she could begin to look at, the ways they had hurt her inside when she was just a little girl.

She woke up in a new room, all pink and clean, in a house she didn't recognize, but her parents were there telling her it had all been a bad dream. Sometimes it felt that way. She navigated this new world, trying to put the pieces together. She couldn't fully remember her old life, but she knew her former lawn hadn't been so bright and green and even. She remember creeping through a very different yard, with tall grass choked by weeds. She was very little and in places the plants grew taller than her head. The smell of cut grass was new to her, as was the smell of clean linens and the wholesome meals her mother cooked in the big clean kitchen. She was used to TV dinners, but her mother never served those anymore. Maybe she dreamed those too.

As a little girl she was taken more times that she could count, but was always returned and always, back on earth, no time had passed and no one had noticed her absence. She stopped telling her parents, told herself it really was a bad dream.

When she started high school it all stopped, as suddenly as had begun, the bright lights, the lost time, the confusing pain she sometimes woke up in. Her life became peaceful. She slept in the dark and didn't even dream about the abductions. She started to heal and grow taller. When she got her braces off and saw the young woman looking back at her in the mirror she felt something like hope blossoming in her chest. She had survived it. The darkness was ebbing away, everyday the idea that maybe it was a nightmare felt more and more plausible.

Until the spring that she turned 14 things passed peacefully. They came for her on the night after the first truly warm day in March. Earlier, she and William had peeled off their sweaters and lay on the grass in the field by their old elementary school, sharing a Popsicle from the gas station, their lips and hands sticky, their exposed skin delighting in the warm air. She fell asleep easily that night, but was awoken by the familiar feeling in her neck. She didn't need to see the bright light to know what was next- they were coming for her.


	6. Chapter 6

Back at the hotel room, Scully sat on the edge of the bed trying to hide her trembling hands under her legs.

"We've made a mistake Mulder, we shouldn't be here, this was selfish and stupid."

Mulder noticed how small Scully looked, more fragile than he was used to seeing her. How many ugly beds just like this one had they seen? They used to spread papers and Manila envelopes across the uninspired duvets and work until it was 3 in the morning and their eyes were heavy and then one of them would retreat to his or her own room. Apart, they would both stare into the darkness and try to understand what is was they were feeling.

Later, though they still would rent separate rooms, one room would remain untouched and in the other he would throw her down on the creaky mattress to make love to her. Naked in bed together they never talked about work and her soft body beside his was both new and familiar and RIGHT in a way nothing had ever felt before. He thought maybe this feeling was what he had been searching for.

Things rarely had felt right for Mulder in his adult life. Sometimes movies helped, watching something he had seen fifty times before, knowing each line, no surprises. Scully had helped a lot too. Since the beginning Scully had sustained him and now, now they had built a quiet little life together. They learned to cook, they read books in bed together, they walked around their property holding hands, talking about life, kissing like teenagers. Mulder knew there was still something missing, but it felt less gnawing than it once had. When he was honest with himself, that first week with William was the closest it ever came. The nights they brought William to bed with them and Mulder wouldn't sleep, just lie in the dark watching them both breathe, smelling the baby powder and Scully's floral shampoo. He was whole for one week of his life.

In the diner, Scully had seen William first but Mulder had seen her body stiffen, her hands grow whiter than white around her coffee cup. She sat there frozen and Mulder turned to see their teenager son moving ungracefully to the door, all long legs and red hair. He looked like he still hadn't figured out how to manage his new height. His eyes were sad and so like his mothers.

He looked directly at his parents, and seemed to search for words. Finding none, he headed for the door. They watched him go, watched him get in a pick up truck and disappear down the road.

Mulder saw Scully was crying and they headed back to the motel.

He wasn't sure what to say, so he came to sit beside her on the bed, locking hands with her and kissing her fingertips one at a time.

"Maybe we are being selfish in a way," he said finally. "But Scully, Clarissa Lambert's disappearance is still unsolved"

"We don't even know if that has anything to do with William, people go missing all the time, I just don't see the connection-"

"Look," said Mulder, pulling a file out of his bag. "Clarissa Lambert disappeared in the middle of the night, in a safe neighborhood, with no clues to where she had gone. All reports say she was a good kid who wouldn't just run away. Also, she was petite for her age and I bet if we got ahold of her medical records we would see a history of trauma from previous abduxtions- maybe even an implant."

Despite her best efforts she was somewhat amused. This was the Mulder she remembered. On que the answered. "Mulder I was petite as a little girl too- how does that prove anything?"

"It doesn't- but we can. Do you think you can get ahold of her medical records?"

Scully sighed. "I can, I suppose, but Mulder this is far fetched."

"Come on Scully humor me, I've been known to be right about these things before.."

Scully smiled despite herself. "Ok, Mulder, I'll look into it"


	7. Chapter 7

Scully, who now considered herself a doctor first and foremost, was feeling rather guilty about the hippa violation she was committing. Clarissa has been treated all her life at the only hospital in town, Platte Valley medical, in the pediatric ward. It had only take a brief flash of her badge (which she still had, as she was technically still an fbi consultant) to convince the nurse to release Clarissa Lambert's medical records. The nurse eyed her somewhat suspiciously as she went into the back to retrieve them. It took longer than expected and when she returned her face had changed and Scully couldn't read it- before she had look resentful but almost bored, now, still stern but something else- worried?

"I don't know how to explain this, as I filed it myself, but it's gone."

"Gone?" Scully raised her eyebrows. "Where could they have gone?" Maybe the police already had them? Her mind was racing.

The nurse typed something into the computer, the wrinkles on her forehead deepening. "The is very odd indeed. There is no record of them being checked out."

"Could they just be misplaced?" Scully knew that wasn't uncommon in a busy understaffed hospital.

"Come look for yourself."

Nearly an hour in the back office confirmed the nurse (her name was Judy Baxter) had not been mistaken. Judy brought her a cup of coffee, looking friendlier than before, though her face was still tight with concern. She had a younger girl with a checklist there to make sure they weren't missing any other files.

"This isn't how I run this office," Judy sighed, moving aside a pile of medical records to perch on the desk beside Scully. "This is about that girl who disappeared though isn't it?"

Scully nodded, sipping her coffee. It was bad, burned. At home she had a French press now and Mulder bought dark, organic beans from the food coop in Alexandria, but the bad coffee was strangely comforting, as were then Manila folders and drab decor. She marveled how much her life had changed since her years on the x-files.

"Did you treat her?"

"I'm sure I did- I wish I could remember better, I oversee a lot."

Scully nodded. This didn't surprise her. "Who was her attending?"

Judy pulled her hair behind her ear and leaned over the computer.

"Dr Loch, he mostly does sports injuries, physical therapy, that sort of thing."

Scully walked back through the pediatric wing, having acquired the doctors contact information though no medical records. Pediatric wards are always sad, and mostly Scully felt unaffected but them at this point in her life, but something about the gray walls and peeling construction paper decorations was particularly dismal.

A voice from the shadows of a doorway mad her start.

"You're looking for her too aren't you?"

Scully spun to face the teenage boy, her son, wearing a red and white striped pair of scrubs and holding a broom.

Scully opened her mouth but faltered. "Yes," she said finally.

"Good," said William, running a hand through his hair. "Someone should be. What are you?"

"What am I?" Scully didn't understand.

"What are you, some kind of special detective assigned to this?"

Scully shook her head and pulled out her badge, almost out of habit. "Fbi, but we're not here in er- any official capacity."

Williams frowned. "Then why are you here?"

Scully felt she may have gone into shock at the beginning of the conversation, hence the reason she was being so forthcoming.

"It's a long story," she faltered. "This case, for me and my partner both, it's personal."

William seemed to be reading her, looking her up and down. When he decided she was telling the truth he answered. "It is for me too. Maybe I can help you."

"No-" Scully was regaining her composure. "I mean, no, you're a child, we will figure this out."

She moved away from him quickly down the hall. He was watching her.

"Hey-" he called after her. "What's your name?"

She faltered but didn't turn to face him.

"I'm William, I can help."

Scully spun slowly, her eyes bright.

"How?"

"I have the files your looking for. They haven't helped me, but maybe you can make more headway. You're a doctor right?"

Scully nodded, "how did you know that?"

William shrugged, "I just knew, you spend enough time around here, you know the look."

Scully frowned and finally stepped toward him, holding out her hand, the moment was so strange she thought she might be dreaming. "I'm Dana Scully. Please, call me Dana."


	8. Chapter 8

Mulder had spent the morning filled with restless energy, Scully had gone to look for Clarissa Lambert's medical records early and he found himself left with no tasks of his own. He tried swimming laps in the motels small pool. Then he had made coffee in the mr coffee machine in their room with the complimentary beans, rehung all his shirts, made the bed and went to the lobby to get a newspaper before finally settling on their little cement patio with a paper and a cardboard cup of coffee.

The news in small town Wyoming was boring, and he made quick work of the sports section before moving on to the crossword. He wished Scully was here, she'd only been gone a few hours, but it felt wrong doing the crossword without her leaning over his shoulder and telling him answers.

He was trying to figure out 36 down when he saw them coming up the rocky hotel drive, walking beside each other, it was an odd sight, seeing his son walking towards him with Scully. Their hair was the exact same shade of red, he was fairly certain, despite being somewhat colorblind. They were talking with surprising ease.

Mulder waved from the second story balcony, his heart in his throat. Scully smiled up at him and he was further confused by her calmness given the situation.

"Hey I'll be right down!" he called.

"No, we're coming up to you just a minute."

Moments later they all stood in Mulder and Scully's hotel room.

"William, this is my partner, agent Fox Mulder."

"Mulder- just Mulder is fine," he said quickly, and William held out his hand to him.

"Nice to meet you sir," said William politely.

Mulder eyed Scully, who was standing back from the too men, still looking frustratingly normal. This was not normal. Shaking your sons hand. Mulder wanted to hug him, Mulder wanted to cry and tell him how much he missed him, embarrass him telling him how much he's grown. But he swallowed it all down. As far as William knew, they were meeting for the first time.

Scully seeing the look on Mulder's face raised her eyebrows and came to sit by them on the bed. She pulled a thick folder out of her bag.

"So I did what you asked," she addressed Mulder. "I went to the hospital, I tried to get Clarissa Lambert's medical records. They weren't there."

Mulder opened his mouth but Scully pushed on.

"So it turns out, William here had them."

William nodded and suddenly looked nervous "I mean I didn't mean to steal them- it's just- no one else seemed to care anymore. I mean I took them ages ago and no one even noticed until today." William's cheeks flushed.

"It's ok!" said Scully quickly. Mulder nodded, it wasn't like he and Scully hadn't broke their share of rules.

Scully pulled open the records, of which there were many.

"This may take awhile," she said putting on her glasses.

"I've read them back to front ma'am, but maybe you can make more outta them." His voice had a slight western twang to it, Mulder hadn't expected that.

"William has his own theory," said Scully to Mulder. "He was telling me on our way here. This make take a while-" she gestured to the file, "I'm sure you would like to hear it."

Mulder nodded and poured William a cup of coffee, gesturing for him to follow him to the deck. There wasn't a lot of room, just enough for two plastic chairs and a little table with an unused ashtray next to mulder's half finished crossword.

Mulder kicked his sandals aside and they both sat, looking at the mountains and the ripples of wind on the aqua surface of the pool.

"So-" William looked a little sheepish. "Clarissa is- was- my girlfriend. Everyone here seems to think she's dead. No one is looking anymore. But Clarissa's not dead- I'm sure of it. Maybe you think I'm just saying this because I love her- but I'm not. Clarissa is special. Like not just to me. She just isn't dead, I've been looking for her for months now, but I'm sure she's still alive somewhere and wants to come home."

Mulder frowned. For some reason he believed William, even though generally a victims loved ones are not the most accurate source of information. Scully's voice echoed in his mind I seem to remember you having a few extreme hunches.

"So what do you think happened-" Mulder began.

William riffled through his backpack and pulled out a three ring binder. "I've been doing my research see- and I think I have an idea."


End file.
